February 23, 2011

Libya's Internet hit with severe disruptions

Libya's Internet links have been severely disrupted as chaos spreads across the country, reports News.com.

Over the weekend, traffic appeared to be following a "curfew" pattern, with more restrictions imposed in the evenings, and YouTube is now almost entirely unreachable while Facebook is blocked.

Craig Labovitz, the chief scientist of Arbor Networks, said that as of today, Libya is experiencing a significant Internet outage with traffic volumes 60 percent to 80 percent below normal levels.

That follows a complete outage on Friday night, with the country vanishing from the Internet as completely as Egypt did during its revolts a few weeks earlier. Partial service was restored Saturday morning, only to be cut off again at around 2 p.m. PT, or midnight local time.

Jim Cowie, co-founder and chief technology officer of Internet intelligence firm Renesys, says it's not clear whether the disruptions are intentional or caused by other factors such as power outages. (A report by a CNN correspondent in eastern Libya said the power was up but the Internet was down.)